I haven’t posted in this sub in a minute but just wanted to share my experience with DMs on insta.

I go through the ‘suggested follows’ tab on insta and it shows people that have mutual followers with me that I am not following. This is where I pick out who I want to shoot my shot with.

I follow and even though sometimes i never hear from that user again most often then not i get a followback. Step 1 was successful.

Step 2 is respond to a story with something that justifies a response. She posts a story with a friend, you tell her ‘say hi to X for me’ (you don’t have to know her, most of the time I don’t know them but I play it off by saying ‘she’s the friend of someone I want to meet’).

She could also post a nice place. And you follow up on it by saying something like, ‘you need to go to X’.

The key is dropping the formalities and acting like you know them already. Make assumptions etc.

At this point you should move to get her number, because dms suck after the first few texts.

If i get the feeling things are not going my way and she is dry texting, I usually unfollow and remove her from my followers also delete the chat. This makes her overthink things a bit sometimes and I have had them text me back confused on why I just discarded them like nothing ever happened.